A week before his brand new memoir hit the shelves, Rick Campanelli and I were standing in line at a coffee shop in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighbourhood. I was holding an early copy of his tell-all, Tempted. “It’s a great photo,” said the woman behind us, referring to the closeup pic of Campanelli on the cover. “Although you look quite serious.” The 56-year-old former MuchMusic VJ hesitates before agreeing that’s not usually his vibe. “But, there’s some heavy stuff in there,” he says. She then turned to her 10-year-old daughter, and explained, “I grew up with this guy. Not literally, but I watched him every day on TV.”
This happens a lot to Rick the Temp – a nickname that’s stuck since he won the Temp Contest at MuchMusic in 1994. From that gig answering phones, Campanelli tirelessly worked and charmed his way to an on-air position. Multiple generations turned to him for the latest music videos, interviews with grunge rockers and boy bands, and everyone in between. He later became a co-host of Entertainment Tonight Canada and now he’s on Breakfast Television. But what this fan in the coffee shop didn’t know – in fact, what nobody but a select few have ever known – is that up until just a few years ago, Campanelli was living a double life.
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When the cameras were off, this sweet and innocent Canadian personality, from a hard-working family in Hamilton, Ont., would find a quiet place to call his bookie and put a bet on that night’s game; then, at the end of every week, he’d drive to meet this shady character and either receive an envelope of cash or hand one over. And every time he went on a work trip for Much or ET, Campanelli would find the nearest casino and hit the poker tables. In Tempted, he admits to having a gambling addiction and what a long, strange trip it’s been. Hollywood, take notice – it would make a great movie.
In 2008, when he was at ET, Campanelli was so deep into a secret life of debts and hairbrained schemes that he was thrown in a jail cell in Las Vegas, charged with the “attempted theft” of four casinos, a criminal offence. Somewhere in the bowels of an administration building in Clark County, Nevada, there’s a mug shot of a baby-faced Campanelli. “I still remember to this day my boss, Denise Donlon [the director of programming at MuchMusic], saying after my first few weeks on air, ‘We need to get you more of an edge.’ If she only knew what was going on behind the scenes. I hope this is enough edge.”
Campanelli’s Tempted is one-part nostalgia, looking back at the heyday of MuchMusic; one-part apology to his first wife, Kim Wannamaker, and their 21-year-old son Noah, who both were affected by his out-of-control lifestyle; one part love letter to his current wife, Angie Smith, and their two sons, Jack, 12, and Harrison, 10, who got him on the straight and narrow; and one-part heist thriller, detailing the day he hit up four casinos and walked away with $40,000 in cash. “I felt like I was in a movie. A heist movie,” he writes in the memoir. “I was Danny Ocean, and this was my Ocean’s One.”
In 2009, he had the nerve to return to the scene of the crime, bringing an unknowing Angie with him when he was covering a Las Vegas premiere The Hangover – of course, it was that what-happens-in-Vegas movie. While he was in jail, a friend/bookie, Antonio, paid Campanelli’s debt; and after a court appearance the next day, the charges were dropped. At the time, he had no idea Antonio was a big-time Montreal mobster who would later end up in jail for murder. In fact, Campanelli tells me: “He was this close to being in my wedding.”
Here, he reveals decades of secrets and why he’s telling his story now.
Zoomer: Rick, I have to admit when I realized you were going to be talking about a gambling addiction in your memoir, I thought, “Well, how big will this bombshell really be? So you lost some money …” But wow, what an unexpected loss of innocence this story is.
Rick Campanelli: I know, right? And how I still didn’t learn my lesson even after being in jail with a bunch of crazy characters. You think that would scare you straight, but I was still addicted to gambling. [It would take another five years, in 2013, and his wife Smith’s insistence, for him to enroll in Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Problem Gambling program and clean up his act.]
Z: During your 36 hours in jail, you met one of the Wolves of Wall Street, a colleague of the character Leo DiCaprio played in the Martin Scorsese film.
RC: Yeah, Steely Dave. He was my next-door neighbour in detention. He showed me the ropes, and I needed somebody because I was scared shitless. He took me under his wing. He gave me his email address when I left, but Angie said, “No, we’re not keeping that.” I wish I had it, so that I could connect with him and peel all the layers back. I know he’s a bad guy, a white-collar criminal. But he had a good heart to show me around and help me out.
Z: It’s amazing that nothing ever came out, that mugshot never surfaced, or none of your gambling associates ever told anybody.
RC: Yeah, you’re right. I know. It’s incredible. It was … I was going to say I was lucky, but that’s not it.
Z: It doesn’t seem like you spent all your time covering your tracks.
RC: No, no, no, no. It was just part of me. I was balancing everything. Yeah. In the perfect way possible. I was getting away with all the gambling. I thought I was an open book. And I was the majority of the time, with the majority of what I was living, except the stuff that I was ashamed of and embarrassed about. I was never going to tell anyone in the public eye what I was going through.
Z: Gambling addicts in movies seem dark and seedy, but you are such a happy, fun-loving guy – how do those worlds jibe?
RC: I’ve always been positive. Gambling was an extension of happiness for me; I would do it when I was already having a good day. And, as for going after big jackpots, I always thought, “Well, I want to better my parents’ life by helping them renovate their house; or I’m going to buy my siblings a car; or I’m going to do this for my wife.” It wasn’t about me. It was always spending it on people to make their lives a little easier or better. I already had the money spent, even though I wasn’t winning it.
Z: Why do you think gambling became your vice, what got you started?
RC: I always entered contests as a kid. It all started with a colouring contest. Because when I won that, I thought, “What else can I win?” There were more colouring contests, a mini-putt tournament in high school where I won a trip to the Bahamas, and, of course, the Temp Contest.
Z: Wait, are you saying you went from colouring contests to pulling a heist in Vegas?
RC: [Laughs] I know, it all started so innocent and I got carried away. As a kid, I would sit on the stairs watching my brothers play poker. It just seemed like a mysterious, fascinating world that I wanted to be a part of, but I was too young. I took it all in. I observed it. I knew one day I was going to play it myself. My neighbour had a toy slot machine that took pennies – and I’d pull it over and over waiting for the three cherries. I still have it. My parents bought us a roulette wheel for Christmas one year. The addiction was setting in, for sure. I loved that high, that I could win. I think it all started from a young age.
Z: And, as you said in the book, PROLINE, bookies and casinos would come later. After graduating from Brock University and right before winning the Temp Contest, you signed up to go to school for massage therapy. Do you ever wonder how gambling would have fit into your life if you hadn’t been on TV?
RC: I think being put in front of a camera and having a lot of yes people around you – even on a minimal scale like mine – played a lot into it. If I was a massage therapist, who knows what would have come out. It would have been a normal life – but who’s to say that an addiction of some sort wouldn’t have come to the surface.
Z: Why, after all this time, are you going public now?
RC: I just think the people who were there for me and with me since day one, they need to know, they have a right to know this side of who I was. I’m a lot more mature and older now. And at 56, it’s like, I’m not embarrassed anymore or ashamed. We all make mistakes. I made some foolish ones. I was way out of control. But nothing’s gonna embarrass me or get me down at this stage in my life. I lived through it. I made mistakes. I hope people can understand that. Also, my 21-year-old boy Noah is starting to delve into this world of online gambling. And a lot of the younger generation is as well. And I feel for these young ones when it comes to navigating this world of online gambling – it can get very addictive, very fast. So it’s a cautionary tale that I’m trying to tell.
Z: Your son is actively gambling on sports – how are you handling that?
RC: I try to talk to Noah quite a bit about gambling. I say, “You’re a hard worker, working hard for your money, and you don’t want to just throw it all away by gambling.” He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and he still is living with his mom who’s constantly trying to scare him away from this. I’m telling him about the pitfalls of that world, but I guess he’s going to learn for himself. I just don’t want him to get the way I was. I don’t want to see him going down those roads because that would scare the crap out of me.
Z: You also reveal your infidelity in the book, how you cheated on Noah’s mom. It must be hard to write about knowing your three sons will someday read this.
RC: Noah knows about all it, not in detail, but I told him. It’s my biggest regret, not ending the relationship with Kim before the infidelity set in. But when you’re in that world [of TV] and you’re out of control and you’re not thinking straight and you’re delusional, things happen and temptations are everywhere. And I just wasn’t strong enough. Angie can rest assured that it’ll never happen again. It did something inside me because I hurt someone really bad. And I don’t want to ever do that again.
Z: Let’s talk about Angie. She was with you when you were arrested in Las Vegas. And you guys were pretty early in your relationship?
RC: She was there on day one, when I got pulled off that plane by Homeland Security. And you’d think she would have run for the hills like any normal person would have in that situation. Angie saved me from that demon that I was battling.
Z: I wonder why she stayed in Vegas and waited for you to be released? Obviously people at home were telling her to just get on a plane.
RC: Yes, that’s what her mom was telling her.
Z: So did she wrestle with that or did she know from the start she was waiting for you?
RC: That’s a great question, and you’d have to ask her. I try to get Angie to open up. But she doesn’t say a lot about that. I know there’s more she could say to describe what she was going through. But I think she just saw me, in those early stages, almost like a project. She just wanted me to be a better person. And she succeeded. She won. She really did.
Z: The last time we spoke, you were the face of the Bodog sports gambling site, which would have been after you got help for your addiction. It seems surprising you would associate yourself with that after what you went through.
RC: At that point, I was in full control of my addiction. I wasn’t going to go down those roads of waiting until midnight at a Las Vegas casino so I can take money out because I just got paid that day. I would never do shitty things like that, ever again. I found Bodog exciting because I still love sports. I didn’t see it as wrong at the time. I knew I was never going to get out of control again. Angie and I discussed it and, in the end, it was COVID and we needed the paycheque. Angie kept a good close eye on me.
Z: But you’re not working with them anymore?
RC: When I knew this book was coming out, I knew I had to detach myself from that because the optics just wouldn’t look right. Kids are going to go on these sites when they are a certain age, and I don’t want to be the one to bring them there. This is big business – a $108 billion business. By 2030, it’s going to double that. It’s a beast. It’s a scary, scary world. And it’s pretty black and white. The house is always going to win.
Z: You say you still love sports, going to games. How does it feel to go back to watching sports without having a financial stake in it?
RC: I’m not going to say I’m clean and sober in those terms. I’m not struggling with it the way I was. I have it under control. Angie and I have worked out a system, we’ve made deals along the way. She gets me. She knows that it’s still a part of me. But not the way it was.
Z: So you still bet on games?
RC: I do.
Z: And I saw on Instagram that you were at an Atlantic City casino with your dad.
RC: I was. My dad loves Atlantic City. He used to go with my mom all the time. I didn’t do any table games or slot machines. I don’t have that magnetic pull to gamble at a table anymore. But I put in a couple of sports wagers while I was there, minimal things. But nothing like the days of old.
Z: And not secretive.
RC: Angie knows. She knew exactly where I was going. That’s the main thing too. Nothing is kept hidden anymore. I’m all out in the open when it comes to Angie. I am still trying to rebuild her trust. She’s not there yet 100 percent. But the more honest I am with her, I’m going to get there. I’m not giving up.
